Have you been wanting to take a crack at driving in Forza Motorsport 5? If you happen to be an Xbox One owner with a current Xbox Live Gold subscription, you will get your chance to take Forza 5 for a test drive all weekend long till Sunday night.

Xbox Live Gold members just need to download Forza 5 for free this weekend and you can check it out all weekend long. In addition you can compete in the special Turn 10 events that they will be having all weekend long. In addition those that complete the endurance event and drive at least 130 miles in the race will earn a new title and badge for your Forza 5 profile.

The best part of all is that any Gamerscore, badges, or achievements that you earn over the weekend will carry forward into the full game should you elect to purchase it either digitally or on disc.

Turn 10 has announced the July car pack which is called the “Hot Wheels Car Pack”. The Hot Wheels Car Pack is the final car pack that is included with the Forza 5 DLC Season Pass. While this is the last car pack to be included with the season pass, Turn 10 confirms that additional DLC content is still coming for Forza 5, but everyone will have to buy it, if they want it.

The Hot Wheels Car Pack can be downloaded right away and is free for Season Pass holders, while it will cost $10 for those without a Forza 5 season pass. As far as when we can look forward to more DLC content, the only clue we have is that it is coming in the weeks and months ahead. No word if any additional track content will be released for Forza 5, but we would not count on it at this point.

Turn 10 had some great news for those that took the plunge and purchased the Season Pass for Forza 5. The developer will be releasing two new DLC packs shortly that will be free to Forza 5 Season Pass buyers.

Originally, the Season Pass was to end with the release of the Meguiar’s Car Pack DLC this month. Instead, Turn 10 will be releasing two additional DLC car packs which will add 20 additional cars to the Season Pass DLC. This will bring the total number of cars released as DLC for Season Pass buyers to 90 new vehicles to drive.

While the two additional DLC packs are expected to be sold as add-ons for those who didn’t purchase the Season Pass, Turn 10 has not provided any additional details on that at this time. In addition Turn 10 has not indicated what the future may hold for Forza 5 and additional content.

Although not yet officially confirmed, it is likely that Turn 10 is planning additional DLC content and is not yet finished with Forza 5 just yet. While it might be too much to hope for to see many more additional tracks for Forza 5, we have to think that at least one additional track release and a few more DLC car packs are not out of the question just yet as the developer has continued to work on Forza 5 in response player feedback.

While we already know that Forza 6 is not in the cards this year, we do believe that a sequel to open world Forza Horizon which has become known as Forza Horizon 2 which is being developed by Playground Games in conjunction with Turn 10 Studios for the Xbox One will be announced officially at E3. Sources say that we should expect it for a Fall release this year.

At GDC Microsoft in conjunction with Turn 10 Studios showed a demo featuring Forza 5 that was converted to run on a DirectX 12 powered PC. While we all know that DirectX 12 is Microsoft’s attempt to update its API to deliver console like graphics with those types of abilities.

In a demo Chris Tector from Turn 10 Studios show a demo of Forza 5 that had been ported or updated if you will to take advantage of the DirectX 12 technology to run on the PC. According to Microsoft, the technology that is powering the Xbox One is now available to developers in DirectX 12, so it should be easy to port Xbox One titles to the PCs using the DirectX 12 API.

Microsoft claims that DirectX 12 features a more bear metal approach that is available to developers, meaning coding closer to the hardware with less API to get in the way for better performance. This is similar to the benefits of AMD’s Mantel API that can provide similar benefits.

The biggest question seems to be however, if Forza 5 Motorsport will be released for the PC. Right now the answer to that question is unknown. No release announcement or intention of releasing Forza 5 for the PC was announced. Sources tell us that a final go or no go for a PC release has yet to be made, and if it does get made it is likely to come closer to the release of DirectX 12 which is later this year in the Fall of 2014.

Microsoft and Turn 10 studios announced today that Forza 5 has earned a place in Xbox history as the fastest selling title in the Forza franchise that spans the release of five titles on three Xbox platforms. Since its release on the 22nd of November last year, Forza 5 has sold an amazing 1.3 million copies, which means that one-third of the current crop of Xbox One owners purchased Forza 5.

In other Forza 5 news, Turn 10 announced the first track pack update add-on for the title. The famed Road America, which has been called by many the best natural terrain road course in North America, will be made available to players for free just by downloading it. In addition, with the release of the Road America track, a number of new Road-America-themed events will be added to the Rivals mode and multiplayer lobbies.

Those Forza 5 Season Pass owners are in for a treat, as Turn 10 has releases that it calls the Road America booster pack, which includes five new cars. It is a free bonus for Season Pass holders and the Road America booster pack cars are in addition to the six monthly DLC car packs that are part of the Forza 5 season pass. The five additional cars are: 2006 #2 Audi Sport North America R8, 1995 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1, 1968 Ferrari 365 GTB/4, 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 and the 2009 Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG Black Series.

Adding Road America to Forza 5 is a good start for Turn 10, but we are hopeful that this is a clear indication that at least a few more tracks are coming. Of course, Turn 10 is not confirming this, but sources tell us that at least another track pack is possible. Let’s hope that is the case, as there are a few more circuits that we would sure like to see added to the game. Including a street circuit from the IndyCar series like Long Beach would be nice addition.

Now that we have had a time to spend playing Forza 5, we have to admit that we can see why many have been left a bit disappointed. While Dan Greenawalt can say that he is disappointed by the comparisons between Forza 4 and Forza 5, the truth is that Turn 10 should have expected as much.

Yes, Forza 5 is hands down an excellent example of and demo of the next generation simulation racing on the Xbox One. The thing is that we were so spoiled by the amount of content in Forza 4 that Forza 5 has come up so short in the number of tracks and the number of cars that after putting some serious time in the game already, I admit that I pretty sick of the included tracks. There simply are not enough circuits to racing on and variations of the same tracks is just that.

The included 14 tracks are simply not enough. The 25 tracks included with Forza 4 left players never really feeling like they were racing on the same old tracks. While the addition of Bathurst is great, the fact that Road America and Mugello are missing just make me wonder how this could be? Road America is considered one of the best, if not the best natural terrain road course in the US. While Greenawalt has explained that the lack of courses has more to do with issues of the capture data for these other tracks not being of high enough quality for next-gen. While I can understand this, it obviously makes it no better with the possibility of DLC track content a possibility, but not for some time.

I am not even going to get into the lack of cars and the broken economy in the game at the start that seemed to make it impossible to start getting the cars you wanted by driving the same tracks or modified versions of the same tracks over and over again. Yes, Turn 10 has heard the cries and they have made changes, but the marketplace for example is still not online, so the game does really lack when you compare it to where Forza 4 was right out of the box.

I challenge Greenawalt or someone else at Turn 10 to give us faithful players a road map on what their plans are for Forza 5. I am honest when I say that Forza 5 was the reason I wanted an Xbox One, but while the game is a good start for a next-generation racing simulation title, it just lacks so much that I am left shaking my head and wondering when I am going to get the other half of the game that I so want. Till Turn 10 spells out the future for Forza 5, I suggest that those complaining about the negative reviews of Forza 5 take player disappointment into consideration before being so bummed about the scores that Forza 5 is getting.

As promised, Turn 10 has finished a major update to Forza 5 that already in the certification pipeline for release very soon. The update will include major changes to the in game economy which was promised due to player feedback. In addition the update will add new game modes drag racing and a multiplayer “Tag” mode.

The changes in the in-game economy will see players receiving as much as 60% more per pay out depending on the chosen settings. For example in a situation where a driver would receive a 15,000 credit payout, now that same driver with the same settings would receive a 35,000 credit payout. That is a major improvement.

The cost of cars will be coming down as well. An example provided by Turn 10 says that a Ferrari 250 GTO that currently costs 6 million credits, will only cost players 2 million credits after the update is applied. This should help players get the cars that they want sooner.

While no specific release date has been announced, we suspect that Turn 10 is doing the best that the can to get it out of certification as soon as possible. With all of the Xbox One consoles that will be opened Christmas day and the heavy new influx of Forza 5 players, we are sure that they will want to get it deployed before then if at all possible.

It was not Microsoft who mandated or suggested the microtransaction economy that is found in the latest Forza. Dan Greenawalt who is the creative director for Turn 10 Studios who is the developer of Forza 5 says that it is something that they came up with at Turn 10 and experimented more with in Forza Horizon before developing the economy that you see today in Forza 5.

According to Greenawalt, he claims that the microtransactions represent and “accelerator” not a “pay wall”, but he acknowledged that fans have not responded well and the developer admits that they will fix the economy in Forza 5 and in the hopes to win back the fan’s trust.

Turn 10 experiments with a lot of things and when the studio has gotten wrong they have always responded and fixed it. Being a big Forza fan myself, I have no reasons to think that they will not respond to the complaints and fix what needs fixing.

Turn 10 has confirmed that upon release of Forza 5 the title will only be coming with 14 tracks to race on and 200 cars. This s a far cry from Forza 4 where the game features 26 tracks and over 500 cars at launch.

As for the reason why, it simply comes down to quality. Turn 10 favors the delivery quality of quantity, but the studio admits that many of the tracks it had they were not happy with as they were scanned at lower resolution and simply needed to be recaptured so that can exhibit the quality and high polygon count that people are expecting on the Xbox One. For example, the Nurburgring will not be included in Forza 5, but rumors suggest that it could come later, bit Turn 10 is making no promises.

Beyond the car packs for that have been announce, Turn 10 has no news to announce about additional tracks at this time.

Turn 10 Studios announced the first Car Pack for the upcoming release of Forza 5 on the Xbox One. The first Car Pack which is to be called the LaFerrari Car Pack will arrive for purchase and download launch day alongside the game itself on November 22nd.

The big news about the LaFerrari Car Pack is the news that it will be the first time that players will be able to drive Ferrari’s new hypercar which will be one of the fastest in the world. The incredibly rare hypercar will be one car to be included in the package which will include an additional nine other cars. Details of the cars to be included will be coming on November 18th.

While players will be able to purchase cars on an a la carte basis, Microsoft is offer a season pass that will save you 18% if you want access to all six car packs. The plan is for the first car packs to be released once a month during the first week of every month, starting in January of 2014. We suspect that since Microsoft says the Car Packs will be ending in March 2014, which leaves us wondering why things don’t add up. Look for Turn 10 or Microsoft to clear up the release schedule in the next couple of days.